During the pandemic, the healthcare field has been under a lot of stress just by the sheer number of patients each professional is seeing. At Brookdale, the Student Nurses Association has members with a passion for helping people.
Politics have entered hospitals with differing opinions about the vaccine, and healthcare workers are leaving their jobs because they are choosing not to receive it. This leaves more and more work for nurses, doctors, and other hospital workers. The Student Nurses Association is feeling the impact of the pandemic, along with the politics that come with the attempt to end it.
“Being so short-staffed scares me to become a nurse at times because of burnout and how instead of being healthcare heroes and getting pay bonuses and tons of recognition, they are trying to cap travel nurse’s pay and put us in unworkable conditions,” said Amber Axelson, a nursing student from Neptune.
Axelson is currently working at Riverview Medical Center as a night float patient care technician, meaning she moves throughout the hospital wherever help is needed. This includes seeing Covid and ICU Covid patients.
It is estimated that 27 percent of nurses have between six to 10 years of experience, otherwise meaning they are well-prepared for their jobs, but what about current nursing students?
“There were also restrictions on open lab time which made it hard to do test outs, which are simulations of us performing a skill such as wound care, tube feeding, etc. Overall, the pandemic has just made it harder for students to get the help they need from professors and practice skills because of the distance restrictions and availability of the faculty due to protocols,” said Axelson. Without hands-on practice, nursing students, as well as other students, have missed out on valuable experience that will be needed throughout their professional careers.
The passion behind nursing comes from personal experience for Jessica Corbett, a nursing student from Millstone. Corbett said “I decided to be a nurse because I wanted to help kids like my nurses helped me when I was little.” She explains further by saying, “Covid-19 affected me wanting to be a nurse because it gave me a fear of the unknown, but also made me think about how you never know what you are walking into.” Prior to the onset of the pandemic, healthcare professionals knew on some level what each day might bring. However, with the rise and fall of the pandemic, each day is different from the last.